There are more challenges than ever in today’s healthcare environment. Limited appointment time, the ability of patients to do their own research which then needs to be discussed with practitioners, and the numbers of patients who are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed; these challenges and others make effective communications between patients and their practitioners more important than ever.

Good communications really boils down to two things: respect for each other, and the ability to manage expectations.

The following will help you understand how to be a good communicator yourself, and what to expect from a practitioner who is a good communicator.

Many nurses are going back to school to earn doctorate degrees, but does that give them the right to call themselves doctor?

Many physicians don’t think so, and they are pushing for legislation to restrict who gets to call themselves a doctor, reports New York Times health reporter Gardiner Harris.

As more nurses, pharmacists and physical therapists claim this honorific, physicians are fighting back. For nurses, getting doctorates can help them land a top administrative job at a hospital, improve their standing at a university and get them more respect among colleagues and patients. But so far, the new degrees have not brought higher fees from insurers for seeing patients or greater authority from states to prescribe medicines….

Dr. Roland Goertz, the board chairman of the American Academy of Family Physicians, says that physicians are worried that losing control over “doctor,” a word that has defined their profession for centuries, will be followed by the loss of control over the profession itself. He said that patients could be confused about the roles of various health professionals who all call themselves doctors.

If you are immersed in the evidence-based design process, then you know that a connection to nature is at the core of how the design of the built environment impacts the reduction of stress/pain and replenishes the soul.

Landscape architecture is a profession that has created exterior places of wellbeing for centuries. Then why not use similar design principles from landscape architecture in the design of an interior? Have you tried? Where are the similarities in the core principles for designing a healing place outside versus inside? Is it truly about blurring the interior and exterior of a building’s experience or is there a secret formula we have yet to crack?

Let’s examine for a minute what would happen if we discarded all of our beliefs about how an interior should be designed and turned to what we know from a baseline of research about how to positively influence the human condition. What if from that baseline of knowledge we asked questions about how to create a safe, human-centered, efficient, effective, mobile, and restorative environment? Hypothesize, if you will, and explore a new set of design principles that inform a new design vocabulary.

Atna Insurance is sending its network’s doctors alerts via mobile devices for patient care, as more medical professionals use smartphones and tablets in their daily practices.

Aetna sends free mobile medical alerts and offers e-prescribing services to its Florida network doctors to better help coordinate health care. The insurance carrier has not yet said if it will expand the service nationwide, but it may do so if the Florida doctors embrace the new alert system.

Aetna said the services allow doctors to instantly access medical literature, as well as clinical and patient information from Aetna’s claims department, even while the doctors are with their patients. This will allow them to identify safety issues, talk with patients about missed tests or checkups and discuss health management programs.